self-harm and reasons

I was13 when I first started to self-harm. I just to self –harm in two ways

First way was overdoes and the second was to rub my arms, legs and tummy till they bleed.
The overdose there was different reason for this:
1) Was to get all the bad out of me.
2) It was also a way of losing weight. As after an over-dose. I would find it hard to eat. It made me feel sick all of the time and made my tummy feel full. OK it did not last long but it stopped my craving for a while.
3) I got the loving/caring attention I wanted.

The friction burns there was different reason for this:
1) To show how much I was hurting in side.
2) I wanted to say in the life I once knew. (Where I was being hurt, beaten and burned etc and punished for me doing wrong.) As the world seemed scary and unpredictable.
3) I got the loving/caring attention I wanted.
4) It was a way of balancing good and bad. So it was a way of control.

When I did self-harm I felt safe and satisfied may be because it was all I known.
It’s been 2 years since I last took and over-dose and 1 year since I friction burned.
OK I do some times feel the need to self-harm but I think of my family and what it does to them. It hit home when I went into the therapeutic community. They help me realizes the consequences of my actions. They showed me that when I self-harm people was hurting inside to. I was not only making my life hell. I was doing it to them my family and friends. How they showed this to me was I became friends with people in the community they had to trust me, work along side me. Most of all live with me. I had to do this in return for them. So it was hard for them or me to see them hurting them self. It made me think of all the pain and horrible feeling it had on my friends and family. It also had an affect on others as if they self-harmed it’s OK I can do it. Gave people permission to do it or an excuse. But you did not want the other person to self-harm so you also had to think of them as well as your self.